Short Selling: Pilbara Minerals shorts surge above 20% + 15 stocks with rising short interest

Welcome back to the Short Seller Series, where we delve into the most heavily shorted stocks on the ASX and highlight those with significant changes over the past week.

Short selling data is four days behind today's date because reporting is not mandatory until three business days after the trade. The tables below compares short interest changes between November 15 and November 22.

Most shorted stocks

Short interest continues to pile into household battery metal names like Pilbara Minerals and Syrah Resources as well as struggling names like Core Lithium and Sayona Mining.

Most Short Covered Stocks

Shorts in Janus Henderson continue to unwind ahead of its delisting from the ASX, scheduled for December 6 as "the benefits to the company’s shareholders of maintaining the ASX listing no longer outweigh the financial, administrative and compliance obligations and cost."

Stocks with Rising Short Interest

I haven't seen such a broad-based uptick in short interest in a while. We'll elaborate on some of the most targeted short stocks below.

Peninsula Energy (ASX: PEN) shorts spiked after it raised $60 million at 7.5 cents per share (a 37% discount to its previous close) on November 20. Despite the initial 31.7% plunge, the stock has since rebounded 28% to 10.5 cents. Are short investors 'out of the money' here?

Peninsula Energy short interest (Source: Shortman)

AGL Energy (ASX: AGL) shares have been red in 10 of the last 11 trading sessions. Here are a few recent events of interest for AGL:

• November 2: AGL shares fell 2.3% in parallel with AustralianSuper rejecting the takeover bid for rivals Origin Energy, which triggered a sharp 6.6% selloff.

• November 21: AGL holder Grok Ventures said it will abstain from voting on the remuneration report but noted the board had set weak climate targets in regards to executive bonus hurdles

• November 22: The Albanese government announced plans to dramatically expand the underwriting of green energy generation and storage, according to the AFR. The major overhaul excludes support for much needed gas projects.

Zip's (ASX: ZIP) uptick in short interest has come at an interesting time. Shares in US-listed rivals Affirm are up around 85% in November. More recently, Jefferies upgraded Affirm to Hold from Underperform, citing the stabilisation of cost of capital, capital markets activity and credit performance as well as positive adoption rates for buy now, pay later. Should investors treat this as a recovery for the BNPL sector or just Affirm in isolation?